The Great License Plate Mystery

Happy Holidays everyone! (Not to sound ignorant, but is it okay to say that to atheists?) I was driving on the Eastern Shore of Maryland today and I saw something that made my mind short-curcuit. ZZZZZZZZTTTT! (Insert you own "John's brain does that all the time" joke here.) It wasn't a man driving a pickup truck with a live chicken on his lap, who hasn't seen that? Nor did I see some idiot from Pennsylvania or New Jersey driving like a total imbecile, again, who hasn't? What I saw was a man driving a mini van with a license plate frame that read: "Jesus went to Calvary", or something to that effect. Not sure what that meant or if I had read the wording correctly. I didn't get a second look because the next thing that grabbed my attention was the license plate, which read simply: "IMABONG".

The literature quickly zoomed north on 301 as I took the 50 east exit, more than a little perplexed. Jesus was into horses and the chronic? I know he was a carpenter who wore hemp. I called my brother and my best friend to see what they thought. Both, like myself, were a bit mystified. Perhaps this guy was a former hippie that had found Jesus. You know, "Doobies for the Divine", or "Joints for Jesus" or something along those lines. I re-read the license plate in my mind just to make sure I was interpreting the message correctly. It seemed pretty straight forward to me. I wasn't like some of the other personalized plates you see out there. You know the ones I mean. "SUX2BU" or "ZO86XWO". Ones that cause you to rear-end the idiot who you are following as you attempt to decipher the Incan text on his bumper that some inmate serving 6 to 10 in the pokey hammered out, undoubtedly wearing the same look you have on your face when you hand the police officer your insurance information.

License plate decoding has grown more frustrating over the years, especially in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where it costs extra to not have your license plate personalized. Simply known as the Pretentious Asshole Act of 1989, Virginia requires all drivers to come up with a saying that can be spelled out using any combination of up to 7 letters and/or numbers. The monogrammed twaddle knows no socioeconomic boundaries; you are just as likely to find a personalized plate on an '88 Geo Metro as you are of seeing one on a Mercedes 300SL. However, the man in the minivan was not, I repeat, not from Virginia. Hmmm... The mystery deepens.

I wonder if anyone has done a study that shows monogrammed licensed plates create dangerous driving conditions by increasing traffic congestion exponentially? Actually, I think just by typing the above line I conducted that very study and proved it to be true. Don't believe me? I attended George Mason University for two semesters in 1991-92. I knew 17 people in my immediate circle of friends that were a.) from Virginia and b.) had monogrammed license plates. Throw in the other 17,000 students at the mostly commuter school of 22,000 that had personalized plates and that makes it a clear majority. Traffic was horrendous back then. Now, traffic in Northern Virginia is beyond ghastly. Traffic is so bad that atheists are praying for mass transit.

Which brings me back to the supposed human hooka. Unless he was referring to himself as the sound made when one strikes a gong or was driving his daughter's van while she is home for the Holidays, oblivious to what the license plate suggested about his identity as a glass water pipe used for smoking various forms of licit and illicit drugs, I am at a loss. It keeps eating away at me, much like the drugs this guy is apparently doing. I have to be missing something, right? Jesus and bong on the same car, much less the same license plate, seems more than a bit strange. Was there a hidden meaning I'm missing altogether? Was it some special code that only followers of a certain cult can decode, therefore possessing the secret for eternal life by pulling tubes and going to the track? And, perhaps most important of all, does this guy know where I can get some good stuff?

I know this is America and all, the land of freedom and liberty. I realize that our rights are compromised regularly when we should be fighting to protect them, but perhaps in order to ensure a more perfect driving experience and establish safer highways, we should take away the right to put personalize license plates on our cars. Surely, one could understand that the suspension of the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America for personal safety on America's roadways is more important than religious freedom and freedom of speech. Plus, I won't have to live with the mystery of what the hell Mr. Bong's plate meant. Monogrammed plates are an evil that need to be dealt with; it is a problem that has been ignored for far to long. We need to act now before more Christians for the Chronic accuse our lord and Savior of being a stoner, or before atheists begin riding around with license plates that read "_________ ".